You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

In capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority.

If an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

Neither the chains of dictatorship nor the fetters of oppression can keep down the forces of freedom for long.